


Falling to Victory

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dark, Dark-but-not-Evil!Rey, Familial Love, Gen, General Unpleasantness, War, sort of a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Written for the Star Wars Writing Alliance's October theme: "Fall to the Dark Side."
In which Rey does not fall all at once, but somehow the slow steps towards Darkness are just as dangerous.
Beta, as always, by my wonderful, patient, endlessly delightful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	

Rey’s fall to the Dark Side is not all in one moment, as Kylo Ren’s was, washed in blood and irredeemable cruelty. It is not marked in fire and betrayal as Anakin Skywalker’s was. It is slow, and easy, and it is only when she finally looks up from the corpse of her great enemy, his blood staining her sleeves a red so dark it’s almost black, that she realizes what she has become.

She’s not sure she regrets it, even then.

Master Luke told her the Force desired harmony, that she must learn to put her passion aside and give it to the Force, that she must find serenity even in the heart of chaos. And for a while, she did. Even now, she finds her greatest strength at the heart of the whirlwind that is the Force, when it rises about her like the sandstorms which blasted flesh from bone upon the open plains of Jakku, and she rides it and rises over it and lets it pass through her without touching her, without drawing her into its madness, and sends it where she desires it to go.

But Master Luke died when he faced Kylo Ren, as Han Solo died, as the children of the Jedi School died, and with him died the last of Rey’s hope for a father, for a protector. She will not have that, will never have someone to stand for her as they tried to do, and so she sets aside forever that desire, sends it to the Force as Master Luke taught her, and opens herself instead to the grief and despair that comes swirling in to replace the hope which has finally died.

And with that grief flowing through her veins like blood she strikes down Kylo Ren, and her sorrow gives her strength, and her anger gives her speed, and she does not hesitate, this time, when he lies bleeding on the ground, but takes his heart in return for the one he has torn from her chest, and leaves his corpse to bear mute witness to her rage and victory.

_Through passion, I gain strength._

But that is not the moment that she falls.

For she goes home, home to the Resistance, to Finn who loves her and Leia who is a mother to her and Chewbacca who is the best older brother in the galaxy, and she weeps in their arms, and gives her grief to the Force, and for a while she forgets the glory of standing with her enemy’s beating heart in her bloody hands, forgets the strength and speed of the sandstorm which bore her up and gave her victory.

But there are more Knights of Ren, and she stands between them and the galaxy, alone with her sword blazing blue in her hands, for Finn has chosen the path of the General - and he is wise and good and clever, he is a fitting successor to Leia, he is all that Rey could dream of in a friend and in a brother, but he does not stand beside her now, on an empty plain with the Knights of Ren before her, and then Rey remembers glory, remembers blood and victory, and opens herself again to the whirlwind of the Force.

The battle that follows is a dance, it seems to her later, for she is never where the blows fall, but her own saber strikes and strikes and strikes again, unerringly, and she leaves arms and legs and heads scattered in her wake, leaves her enemies in broken heaps; she rides the whirlwind, she gives her passion to the sandstorm and it bears her up in triumph, she draws strength from anger and speed from blood-born joy, and when the battle ends she stands victorious, the only living thing on that vast plain.

Her tunic is stained, this time, stained with the blood of her enemies, and Rey looks down at the wine-dark spatters and thinks the pattern suits her, somehow.

_Through strength, I gain power._

But that is not the moment that Rey falls.

She is captured, months later, by General Hux’s Stormtroopers, who strap her to a chair - they did not learn, she thinks even as they snap the restraints about her legs, that no such chair can hold her if she does not wish to be held - and leave her for their General. And Hux comes in and gloats about the glory of his Order, about the way he will broadcast her painful death to strike fear and despair into the hearts of her enemies, and Rey waits until the broadcast has begun to break her restraints and tear the General limb from limb with her bare hands, Force-strengthened, and grins with blood-stained teeth at the holocaster before she strides from the room to leave a trail of destruction through the ship on her way to the ship bay, broken white-armored bodies strewn behind her like fallen leaves, and makes her escape.

The First Order’s propaganda broadcast does not have quite the intended effect.

_Through power, I gain victory._

But that is not the moment that Rey falls.

She falls the day she learns that Lord Snoke has captured Finn, and that the price for Finn’s freedom is her own surrender. She puts her lightsaber into Leia’s trembling hands and walks clear-eyed and willingly into the First Order ship which has come to collect her; she bears up under the pain they inflict upon her, patient as the endless sands of Jakku; she waits like a desert predator for her prey to come near enough that she may leap upon it. She waits, coiled in her power, knowing that the sandstorm waits upon her word and will.

She is brought at last before Lord Snoke, to find Finn chained before the throne, his skin streaked with his own blood, his bright eyes dulled with pain and misery; he looks at her with endless grief and says, voice hoarse with screaming, “You should not have come. I’m not worth it.”

“Finn,” Rey says, smiling with all her teeth at the dark Lord on his throne. “You are worth the galaxy twice over.”

And she gives herself to the Dark.

She snaps the chains they’ve put upon her, careless of the heavy durasteel; she is the sandstorm, and what does the sandstorm care for the works of men? She breaks the collar which holds Finn to the throne’s leg with a thought, sweeps him to one side where he will be safe with that odd gentleness which even sandstorms sometimes show. And then she reaches out for the Dark Lord, held motionless by her power, and she breaks him, and she breaks him, and she breaks him, until at last there is nothing left of his power and malice but a whimpering heap upon the floor at her feet, which begs in voiceless breaths for death.

And she tears out his heart with her hands, and turns with her sleeves stained crimson-dark with blood to see the Stormtroopers on their knees to beg for mercy.

Rey holds their lives in her hands, and as the blood drips from her fingers she finds herself smiling, because the sandstorm has come and gone, and left her standing in its wake, victorious.

That she has fallen seems not so great a price to pay for victory.

And Finn is worth the galaxy, so she gives it to him, raises him to the throne his tormentor once occupied, cries out, “All hail!” and grins wide and sharp with bloodstained teeth as the Stormtroopers cheer their Emperor and his bloody-handed champion.

The Darkness waits like a sandstorm on the horizon, and Rey knows that she is mistress of its power, that she can call it from its resting place or send it once again to wait upon her word, that the Force answers to her hand, feral and furious but _hers_ , and she will ride its whirlwind till the day she dies.

_Through victory, my chains are broken_.

Rey stands free and fierce beside her brother’s throne, and the blood of her great enemy is sweet as victory upon her tongue.

What she has won, she thinks, is worth the Fall.

**Author's Note:**

> The Sith Code, apparently, goes like this:
> 
> Peace is a lie, there is only passion.  
> Through passion, I gain strength.  
> Through strength, I gain power.  
> Through power, I gain victory.  
> Through victory, my chains are broken.  
> The Force shall free me.
> 
> Also, I'm over on tumblr as imaginarygolux if you want to come by and say hi!


End file.
